He had never set eyes on her since.

And now, on this day at Wilkins’s, he had seen in the restaurant, and he saw again before him in his private parlour, a faded and stoutish woman, negligently if expensively dressed, with a fatigued, nervous, watery glance, an unnatural, pale-violet complexion, a wrinkled skin and dyed hair; a woman of whom it might be said that she had escaped grandmotherhood, if indeed she had escaped it, by mere luck—­and he was point-blank commanded to believe that she and Rose Euclid were the same person.

It was one of the most shattering shocks of all his career, which nevertheless had not been untumultuous.  And within his dressing-gown—­which nobody remarked upon—­he was busy picking up and piecing together, as quickly as he could, the shivered fragments of his ideas.

He literally did not recognize Rose Euclid.  True, fifteen years had passed since the night in the pit!  And he himself was fifteen years older.  But in his mind he had never pictured any change in Rose Euclid.  True, he had been familiar with the enormous renown of Rose Euclid as far back as he could remember taking any interest in theatrical advertisements!  But he had not permitted her to reach an age of more than about thirty-one or two.  Whereas he now perceived that even the exquisite doll in paradise that he had gloated over from his pit must have been quite thirty-five—­then....

Well, he scornfully pitied Rose Euclid!  He blamed her for not having accomplished the miracle of eternal youth.  He actually considered that she had cheated him.  “Is this all?  What a swindle!” he thought, as he was piecing together the shivered fragments of his ideas into a new pattern.  He had felt much the same as a boy, at Bursley Annual Wakes once, on entering a booth which promised horrors and did not supply them.  He had been “done” all these years....

Reluctantly he admitted that Rose Euclid could not help her age.  But, at any rate, she ought to have grown older beautifully, with charming dignity and vivacity—­in fact, she ought to have contrived to be old and young simultaneously.  Or, in the alternative, she ought to have modestly retired into the country and lived on her memories and such money as she had not squandered.  She had no right to be abroad.

At worst, she ought to have looked famous.  And, because her name and fame and photographs as an emotional actress had been continually in the newspapers, therefore she ought to have been refined, delicate, distinguished and full of witty and gracious small-talk.  That she had played the heroine of “Flower of the Heart” four hundred times, and the heroine of “The Grenadier” four hundred and fifty times, and the heroine of “The Wife’s Ordeal” nearly five hundred times, made it incumbent upon her, in Edward Henry’s subconscious opinion, to possess all the talents of a woman of the world and all the virgin freshness of a girl.  Which shows how cruelly stupid Edward Henry was in comparison with the enlightened rest of us.